Meaningful Use
A fresh batch of disheartening Stage 2 attestation numbers has prompted several industry groups to once again implore the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to shorten the meaningful use reporting period in 2015 and offer more leeway on some of its more problematic measures.
The past few years have been "a very, very intense time" for health IT workers, said Jim Turnbull, chief information officer at University of Utah Health Care, speaking at the CHIME Fall CIO Forum this past week. As he and other CIOs look ahead toward the next few years, they see more challenges still to come.
The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, better known by its acronym CCHIT, is ending all operations, and expects to conclude the process by later this month. The closure follows an announcement earlier this year that it would stop EHR certifications and focus on advisory services.
MedStar Health, the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region, and Cerner have signed a seven-year agreement to streamline operations, help improve the quality of patient care and develop technologies that align with MedStar's vision.
As we head into Congress' lame-duck session, the national policy agenda for healthcare CIOs will revolve around meaningful use, cybersecurity, ICD-10 and patient safety. At the CHIME 2014 Fall CIO Forum, Capitol Hill insiders offered strategies for managing the multitude of rules.
When Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell snagged national coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, to help in the Ebola fight, neither entity said whether she would return to ONC or stay on as acting assistant secretary at HHS over the long term. It turns out that she will continue her ONC work in several ways even while assigned to the Ebola detail.
The American Medical Association released a statement Monday that points to the organization's concern over the recent departure of key leaders from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The ONC exits most recently include the coordinator herself, Karen DeSalvo, MD.
Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of standards organization HL7, came away from the joint meeting of the federal Health IT Policy and Health IT Standards committees earlier this week, thinking that the industry could move faster on interoperability. And HL7 has just the thing to change the game.
A coalition of healthcare associations today called on HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell to revamp the meaningful use program. "Without changes to the MU program and a new emphasis for interoperable EHRs/EMRs systems and HIT infrastructure, we believe that the opportunity to leverage these technologies will not be realized," the organizations wrote.
Stage 2 of meaningful use is supposed to be about interoperability of data, with electronic records flowing securely between sites as needed to help hospitals and doctors provide better care. But the number of attestations to Stage 2 has been anemic, and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting true interoperability is a long way off.